In 2009 Kitchn reader Debbie and her husband bought a classic 1920s Chicago bungalow in a short sale from someone who’d been unable to flip it due to the recent housing crash. When the owner couldn’t sell the place for what he was asking, “he ripped out everything in the kitchen and just slapped stuff on the walls, including cheap cabinets that were literally attached to the walls with a few screws,” Debbie tells us.
